DNA Pioneer: Africans Less Intelligent than Westerners

For a few seconds I thought about blasting a copy of the full article to my usual email cohorts so that they could share in my righteous indignation. Then I stopped and said to myself, "What's the point?" We already know the tricks of those who despise us. They come out with this intellectual inferiority dribble-drabble disguised as science every x-number of years. So what's new.

But the sad thing is not that another esteemed White scientist asserts Blacks to be intellectually inferior. What is sad, is that I know many Blacks who deep down in their gut also believe it to be true; they believe in their own inferiority. This is sad indeed.

There's a bit of irony for me in the timing of this article/news. You see, for the past two days I have sat in job interviews where middle-aged White men interviewed me. While listening to these men speak about their own backgrounds, the job opportunity, and ask me questions about my qualifications, a thought kept running through my mind - "How in the world did White men ever come to dominate this world?" Many of my encounters with them do make me wonder.

It's all a bad dream and we will all wake up soon.

Sent by C. Robinson | 3:43 PM | 10-17-2007

Was it western intelligence that enabled the white race to colonize nearly all of Africa or to drive off many of the native and indigenous peoples around the world? Or was it murder,brutality,rape, exploitation,greed,selfishness,hate and a superior attitude.

Sent by ray | 5:22 PM | 10-17-2007

Intelligence tests have consistently found small differences in the mean IQs of various ethnic populations in the U.S. and have just as consistently been criticized for being biased in favor of the white middle class.

Geneticists have determined that everyone, except Africans and recent emigrants, is descended from a very small group of people who walked out of Africa about a hundred thousand years ago.

If descendants of white Europeans have more of whatever American IQ tests are measuring, that measured intelligence is most likely a subset of whatever aspects of intelligence exist in the non-emigrant African population. This could happen in three ways: 1) only a subset of extant intelligence was represented among those initial emigrants; 2) genetic drift in the emigrant group; and 3) selection in the ancient non-African environment for different aspects of intelligence than selected for in the African environment, resulting in differential reproduction.

Putting these two things together, I hypothesize: a) there will be greater genetic variability of all kinds in the non-emigrant African population than in other populations; b) specifically, among non-emigrant African population there will be more aspects of intelligence represented within the population and possibly within individuals. Testing this will require access to appropriate genetic testing as well as intelligence tests developed by Africans for Africans (preferably in English). Sample populations would need to be selected in at least two or three cities in both the U.S. and Africa, all of whom would be tested using African- and American-developed intelligence tests and genetic tests.

Data is, in itself, value-neutral. The question is always what human beings will do with it, and that is always a mixed-bag.

Sent by Judy B. Wylene | 6:01 PM | 10-17-2007

The comments from this man are obviously blatantly racist. His opinions regarding genetic tests to determine "stupidity", affect beauty, and possible homosexuality are just laughable. Perhaps a genetic test regarding Racism could be devised as well, as it seems that Racist/Sexist/Homophobic Morons such as this man suffer from a level of "stupidity" that could be eradicated by such a test. Ah, the gift of sarcasm!

Sent by Toni | 7:08 PM | 10-17-2007

Here we go again when you have no accountability for your actions and failures as a group (whites) and like to perpetuate ignorance you can just come up with a "so-called study" that again denigrates black people and gives all others some kind of edict that they are more superior and worthy than us.But the problem I have is that we as a collective people (Not me personally) Buy into this foolishness and start actually becoming less. They say we don't achieve then suddenly none of the schools with a dominate black population can turn out students that can progress through the school system with academic success, They say all black men are criminals and in jail ,then suddenly there are too many black men 80% in the prison population , They say black women are having babies out of wedlock and are on welfare,then suddenly we have "the baby mama drama" ghetto queen welfare unemployment mothers, They say no good black men for black women,then suddenly black men and black women are fighting and having horrible relationships, They say Hip Hop is the problem with black youth,then suddenly we have black people buying into it and a form of entertainment,recreational leisure,business attainment and comraderie is suddenly identified as a fuel to violence, destruction,woman hating blah blah blah!Look at the Mexicans they say they are illegal immigrants and suddenly they are being shipped out of the country like boxes dehumanized and families broken up, Look at the Arabs they are suddenly all terrorists just because whites declare it. The point is we don't call whites KKK dumb trailer park thieves pedophiles etc.... Why do we allow them to put all of this negative energy on us and thats what we attract . We have to stop perpetuating these stereotypes and hold these whites accountable and PLEASE black people don't buy into this stuff anymore we don't have to put up with this!!!

Sent by R. Wilson | 7:45 PM | 10-17-2007

how many native-born 'black' africans have been awarded a nobel prize in one of the 'hard' science fields over the last 100 years?

the word watson used was 'clever' not intelligent.

if native-born 'black african' culture has yet to evolve to the point to produce the environment for 1st class science discoveries so be it: that's something black africans can shot for -- if they believe it is important.

but there are several dozen native-born white africans who have been awarded a nobel prize in one of the science fields...

these white africans were schooled outside of the black african cultural norms!

Sent by dirtyblues | 7:52 PM | 10-17-2007

I agree with C. Robinson. This is nothing for me to be upset about. I already know there are many people out there who share is opinion. And? I don't care.

To take it a step further I am not going even spend my time trying to prove them wrong. That would mean I truly cared about their opinion. I am going to live my life supporting my family, taking care of my business, and enjoying my friends and loved ones.

True liberation is living for you and yours and defining yourself on those terms, not on the scale someone else has set and defined. I am willing to be most of the people who post on this site are doing just that.

Everything else is water under the bridge.

Sent by TR | 2:19 PM | 10-18-2007

The problem with this man is that biologist today will tell you there is no such thing as race because human beings do not have separate species humans, which means blacks and whites have about the same intellectual capacity. We are all homosapiens. James Watson did not even make a scientific project out of these comments and are only his opinion. At least understand why he got into the DNA business which originally what Nazi's were into.

Sent by Black John | 5:02 PM | 10-18-2007

How original!

The The Nobel Foundation really ought to be more selective with their award recipients...

Sent by Tambay A Obenson | 9:56 PM | 10-18-2007

Well, i am an indian and i would like to know what James'd watson's views on brown vs white people. However, i have to say intelligence is something we all find very hard to measure.
But, there are other social and environmental factors associated with the low intelligence levels in Africa.
most of them are stressed and are working hard to eke out a living, so it is only obvious these tensions would have some impact on the genes they pass on from one generation to the other. in comparison white people spend time drinking beer. going out on a date or having a different beer would be the only problem they have. I would appreciate it if thi Nobel lauriate can further investigate into the reasons and give us the right picture. But, what we have to understand is there are people who managed to rise above all these things and stand apart from the rest.

Sent by Damian | 11:18 AM | 10-19-2007

I don't know what to say. My family's from Nigeria and I'm a college student in physics. I respect scientists and value their judgment over ignorant laymen...it just sucks hearing one of my idols say this. Although, my family does well I sometimes think we're unusually smart for black people. I know it's a horrible way of thinking...this news just ruins my day.

Sent by Adeola | 5:44 AM | 10-20-2007

Keep in mind that "Dr.Watson" is considered the father of the DNA era, this is someone who should know better. But, what many of you don't know is that a woman, Rosalind Franklin, did ALL the work that James Watson (and Francis Crick) claimed to have done on DNA and RNA, which they later one the Nobel Prize for:

Recognition of her contribution to the model of DNA
.... There is no doubt that Franklin's experimental data were used by Crick
and Watson to build their model of DNA in 1953. That she is
not cited in their original paper outlining their model may be a
question of circumstance, as it would have been very difficult to cite
the unpublished work from the MRC report they had seen.[87] It should be noted that the X-ray diffraction work of both Wilkins and William Astbury are cited in the paper, and that the unpublished work of both Franklin and Wilkins are acknowledged in the paper.[1] Franklin and Raymond Gosling's own publication in the same issue of Nature was the first publications of this more clarified X-ray image of DNA.[88]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin

They stole all of Dr. Franklin's work never gave her any credit, even when they accepted their prize made no mention of her contribution. It is these kind of men that have kept minorities and women out of the research labs because they did not believe we are even humans compared to them. It is great that the truth is finally coming out about Dr.Watson. But he is not the only one, Lawrence H. Summers, the former President of Harvard University, is quoted as saying that "innate differences in sex may explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers, stood by his comments". This man is a president of one of the most prestigious leaning institutions in history (Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, as well as the first and oldest corporation in the Americas).

This is why "Blacks In Science, by Dr. Ivan van Sertima is essential reading for all young people, including Dr.Watson and President L. Summers.

Sent by Rodney | 12:43 AM | 10-22-2007

Dr. Watson beliefs about African
Americans such as I literally
has no legs in the body of
truth. AS a natural mathematican
and scientist, my DNA is cream
of the top. Same can for be
said of most blacks in my
field of study.

Sent by jerry a. Myers | 1:00 AM | 10-23-2007

The frequent coming up of this issue just shows the degree of superficiality and lack of a mature and broad perspective to which both the mainstream media and the wealthiest and most awarded portion of the so-called "scientific" community have degraded themselves today.
His arguments are a complete fallacy, not more than a biased, immature and distorted view in the form of opinion -- and I don't care how many nobels or dollars he accumulates in his pocket.
1. The IQ tests are since long known by any accomplished educator to be a very small fraction and unreal picture of what intelligence really is. But perhaps this man's references in education are still from the time of Hitler or when they still looked for blue blood samples within aristocracy.
2. Clearly the main reason why there are no more black skinned people receiving nobles like him is because there are even fewer in the lineage of fascists who fund the so called science of the free market. Genetic and cultural...? Why no mention of social inequality, hundreds of years of slavery and genocide and world domination based on manipulation of history and facts?
3. His shallowness do not deserve any attention, but the media keeps bringing such nonsense up for the obvious indignation creates more revenue and the hidden agenda of creating inferiority complex on any of the exploited people of the world is a constant demand for their sustenance.
PS: My skin color is not black by the way, but my heart is the same as for all human beings, and if melanin production differs, still I am African by ancestry as everyone else according to anthropology.

Sent by ACPBRC | 2:03 AM | 10-24-2007

What these people fail to say (though they know it to be true) is that Asians, overall score higher than whites on IQ tests by about the same margin that they, in the aggregate, tend to score higher than Africans.

Shockley and Jensen, Cyril Burt, and the whole lot of them are engaging in one very narrow form is scientific inquiry by ignoring facts that don't fit their paradigms.

Now, if they did study intelligence and Asians, their whole notion of brain size would come up short, given the smaller stature of most Asians as compared to Europeans and Euro-Americans. Perhaps there's something in the diet that's different. Perhaps by studying intelligence in Asian Americans here and Asians in China, India, Japan, etc., we might find that if their intelligence stays static genetics is a prevailing factor. If, on the otherhand, if Asian IQ scores decline upon long stays in the US, there may be cultural or dietary factors that would beg to be dissected.

Will we see this kind of study? Never, ever, ever, ever.

You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see Black, Asian, Native American and Hispanic psychologists and psychobiologists gather to study this important issue. We cannot leave it to people like Cyril Burt (who, though knighted for his work in intelligence, was found, after his death, to have fabricated his data which "proved" that Blacks were less intelligent that whites).

I'd also like for us to, finally, create new measures of intelligence aside from acquired knowledge normed for age, which is still at the heart of this work (meaning, if you're 10 and know what the average 10 yera old knows, your IQ is 100 and if you know more, your IQ is higher). We've been battling this standard since elitist Binet created a test to weed out children from Paris' overcrowded school system--no surprise that the kids who passed muster were those of the privileged class. IQ tests don't consider creativity, correlative abilities and a host of other factors.

Sent by Lalita | 11:13 AM | 10-24-2007

To Adeola . . . your comments above are the prime example of what supports the thinking of this type of white racist. The fact that you are black and willing to espouse this same type of vile ignorance only points to the self-hate and inferiority complex common among blacks world wide. Sad, sad, state of affairs.

Sent by Avian | 2:58 PM | 10-24-2007

Social isolation could be the cause of Dr. Watson's comments. Unfortunately, in the USA, there is a disproportionately low percentage of black people in the hard sciences. Dr. Watson probably has very little contact with blacks and therefore has an emotional seperation with them. If all he sees are terrible attrocities occuring in these countries, he looks for differences to make the distinction. The most of obvious is the color of the skin. Of course, one cannot turn on the TV and see hundreds of thousands of native americans dying of small pox intentionally given to them. Nor can he see thousands being burned at the stake. The white race has had its fair share of "white on white" violence. It seems that we just cover it up better than 10 year old children holding automatic weapons we engineered.

I do understand his point that people in different parts of the world evolved differently. Why wouldn't base instincts be different after tens of thousands of years of living in a different environment. The way you hunted would be different, your predators would be different, the climate, the pathogens, type of food, etc. But to rate it is flawed logic. We all survived and last I heard, africans do not have litters and they stay with their children until adulthood. So one would think that their mental capacity would be equal albeit different.

Sent by Powell | 7:36 PM | 10-31-2007

I pretty much agree with the article. I wish the rest of you brilliant people could spell. I guess that just verifies the article IS true. Wake up America!

Sent by Persecuted White Man | 10:19 PM | 3-19-2008

I'm with you Persecuted White Man. I can't believe that White People have been so critical of themselves for years over slavery. It has gotten to the point that black people can say whatever they want and they get a free pass. White People are the persecuted class and have been for awhile. Take Obama for example. Imus says what most black people say about their own black women and he is fired. Obama's minister makes racist remarks over and over.....media gives him a pass. There is a double standard. I don't know about you, but right now, I don't care what kind of injustice was done in the past.....I'm only concerned with now. Right now I am not treated fairly. One more thing, you philosophers out there, you really aren't that smart. Please proofread your work before you "click".

Sent by Mr. Agree with Persecuted White Man also known as Jeff | 10:35 PM | 3-20-2008

the man is 79 years old and has been doing this his whole life, dont let your emotions on the subject let you forget that.....

Sent by unknown | 8:25 PM | 6-2-2008